A liquid crystal display device normally includes a pair of polarizers, a liquid crystal display panel (a liquid crystal cell) sandwiched between the pair of polarizers, and one or a plurality of phase plates disposed between the liquid crystal display panel and at least one of the pair of polarizers. The liquid crystal display panel has a pair of substrates disposed to face each other and a liquid crystal layer sandwiched between the pair of substrates.
Examples of the mode of the liquid crystal display panel include a TN (Twisted Nematic) mode, an STN (Super Twisted Nematic) mode, an ECB mode, an IPS (In-Plane Switching) mode, a VA (Vertical Alignment) mode, an OCB (Optically Compensated Birefringence) mode, an HAN (Hybrid Aligned Nematic) mode, an ASM (Axially Symmetric Aligned Microcell) mode, a half tone gray scale mode, a domain division mode, and a display mode using a ferroelectric liquid crystal or an antiferroelectric liquid crystal.
With reference to the ECB mode, there is disclosed a technology utilizing a liquid crystal film set in a state where a nematic liquid crystal is hybrid-aligned (see, e.g., Patent Documents 1 to 4).    [Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2007-316211    [Patent Document 2] Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2008-129177    [Patent Document 3] Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2008-309957    [Patent Document 4] Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2009-42657
However, in an ECB mode liquid crystal display device described in each of Patent Documents 1 to 4, there have been cases where gray scale is inverted in a wide visual angle range when a color close to black is displayed.